When Tsar Alexander I entered Paris in 1814, he captured a city that was the cradle of
European liberal revolution, but at home the Russian Empire, a century onwards from Peter
the Great was an under-developed and
anachronistically feudal society.
The Tsar wielded absolute authority over an enormous and desperately poor population in
an era famous for constitutions, industry, nationalism, and popular revolution.
So then, how did Russia’s autocrats an iron grip on their massive state for so long;
just how did the vast empire of the Tsars actually work?
Well in 1815 the Russian Empire was at the height of its international influence.
It spanned from Poland all the way to the Pacific, it was most populous state in Europe,
and its armies had been instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon.
That said, Russia was feared, not respected.
Compared to Western Europe its society
was backwards; almost the entire Russian population
were serfs, essentially medieval peasants owned by feudal landlords.
About half were owned by the Tsar personally, and only a tiny percentage of Russians worked
in industry.
The Tsar, or the Emperor, was an absolute monarch appointed by God.
At least if you believe the Russian Orthodox Church, and the rural peasantry very much did.
For almost the entire history of the empire, there was not a single formal limit on his
power in Russia proper.
Alexander I made few reforms to that system, though he did accept a constitution in Poland
and autonomy for Finland, both of which Russia had gained during the Napoleonic Wars.
But when Alexander died in 1825 a succession crisis arose, with his brothers Constantine
and Nicholas both contenders.
Western-educated, liberal aristocrats and army officers backed Constantine in what would
become the Decembrist Revolt, arguably the first attempt at a Russian revolution.
Garrison troops in the capital, St. Petersburg
proclaimed loyalty to ‘Constantine and Constitution’
but the Decembrists lacked popular support.
Forces loyal to the new Nicholas I crushed them, and for the next thirty years, he ruled
effectively as a military dictator.
The revolt shines a spotlight on problems that prevented reform in Russia all the way
until the end of the imperial system in 1917.
On the one hand Westernisation, constitutionalism or even republicanism were demanded by the
intellectual and industrial classes, while on the other, the Tsar, the church, and plenty
of the peasantry just as fervently favoured ordained absolutism.
Nicholas I ruled successfully by controlling the peasants through the Church and sidelining
the educated aristocracy, many of whom were executed or exiled for supporting the Decembrists.
Reforms that were made under him weren’t designed to liberalise the state, far from it,
rather they were practical changes meant to amplify Nicholas’ power without making
his workload unfeasible.
One of his more influential advisers was responsible
for codifying centuries of imperial decrees
into an enforceable set of laws.
Then, through three bodies, the Judicial Senate (in charge of justice), the Committee of Ministers
(to advise the Tsar), and the Imperial Chancellery (to execute his will) the Emperor could oversee
every aspect of government in Russia.
At the same time, the Orthodox Church, which had always been deferential to the Emperor,
was brought firmly under state control.
Nicholas made the Holy Synod, the leaders
of the Church, into something close to a government
department under his divine authority.
Nicholas’ son, Alexander II, who succeeded
him in 1855, was just as much of an autocrat, but he was more genuinely concerned about
the needs of the Russian people than his father.
Alexander II came to power at the end of the Crimean War, started by Nicholas I to expand
his influence over the Ottoman Empire.
And that may very well have worked if Britain and France hadn’t come to the Ottomans’
defense and laid siege to Sevastopol in the Crimea.
Alexander was forced to sue for peace and lost some territory in the borderlands,
but at the end of the war, Russia was close to economic and social collapse,
and that gave the emperor a very good reason to modernize his nation.
The Alexandrine reforms of the 1860s were both sweeping and wide-ranging, but by far
the most notable was his abolition of serfdom in 1861.
Even Nicholas I had recognised the evil of effectively enslaving the peasantry, to be
clear though, Alexander II’s emancipation edict was done out of practical necessity.
In his own words, it was ‘better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time
when its abolition would begin from below’.
Small peasant uprisings had become commonplace by the time of Alexander’s accession,
and abolition didn’t completely end unrest
because the serfs' freedom came with a mountain of strings attached.
The Tsar hadn’t just freed the serfs, he had paid off landowners,
and the serfs were required to pay massive redemption fees
for decades after abolition.
The average peasant actually became more impoverished after the reform.
All of that was worth it though to Alexander:
a nation of inefficient farmers was not well-positioned to be
powerful in the industrial world.
Alexander II also created local elected councils for the first time,
though they were dominated by the nobility.
Education was expanded at all levels, creating new professional bureaucrats, but also new
radical reformers, the unprofitable colony of Alaska was sold to the US, railways were built,
a state bank established, and the army somewhat reformed,
though not to the standards of the west.
Under him, policies of Russification were directed at the non-ethnic Russian
parts of the Empire
with the goal of solidifying Russia’s national identity,
Alexander retained laws
that made it illegal to convert away from Russian Orthodoxy,
and he cracked down on revolutionary anarchists and socialists determined
to violently purge Russia of a ruling class.
Alexander II also took aim at the Kingdom of Poland.
It had remained at least theoretically independent from the empire proper until 1864 when a revolt
led by the Polish aristocracy and merchant class was put down.
In retaliation for rising up, when Alexander freed the serfs of Poland he set their redemption
payments considerably lower than those in Russia, denying the Polish elite the ability
to promise peasants freedom in exchange for their support.
Russian also became an official language in Poland. The only region to be treated in the
opposite way was Finland, and the Tsar’s power there was only reduced over the course
of Alexander II’s reign, which to some extent did win over the Finnish population.
All the while, the Tsar had to keep in mind
the need for balance: conservatives and pan-Slavists
in his court balked at any attempt to emulate the west, while liberals called
for more and faster reforms, and further left Nihilists would’ve seen the Tsar and the
state done away with completely.
As it would happen they got some of that:
the nihilist secret society “People’s Will” successfully blew up Alexander II in 1881.
Naturally, Alexander III was not in the mood to compromise with his father’s killers
and the assassination precipitated a massive wave of repression across the empire and the
reversal of some of the earlier reforms made by his father.
When he died in 1894, the last Emperor of All Russia, Nicholas II came to the throne
and he continued what had become an era of reactionism.
The goal of Russification was put on steroids:
Finland lost its constitution in 1899, and all across the empire non-ethnic Russians
were prevented from holding office.
Jews in particular were scapegoated for the death of Alexander II,
and state-sponsored antisemitism, always existent, was ramped up.
Combine that with Russia’s still predominantly agricultural economy falling to pieces trying
to support a rapidly growing population and the small, urban, working-class being underpaid
and economically insecure, and the seeds of revolution were sown.
Russia’s humiliation at the hands of Japan in the Russo-Japanese War served as the spark
to set off a revolt in 1905, which brought about very limited checks on the Tsar’s
authority through an elected legislature, the Duma.
The October Manifesto, issued by Nicholas to appease the revolutionaries promised freedom
of the press, freedom of speech, and a government held to account…
...as soon as the revolutionaries were off the streets he took every step to undermine it.
If anything the Octobrist reforms only weakened the regime, and when another war came about
in 1914, a war which went even worse for Russia, the era of Tsarist autocracy was up.
Nicholas II’s empire fell to revolution
at the height of WW1, but it’s enemies Austria-Hungary
and the German Empire, followed suit in 1918.
To find out how they functioned before that, you should check out the videos to the left.
And as always, I’ve been James and I’ll see you there.